The inter-faith world

We want people of one faith to be comfortable with those of another because they know what they truly believe, not what they thought they might believe.

But what if ‘people of one faith’ believe things that in fact make ‘those of another’ uncomfortable? And vice versa? And why on earth does Blair assume (as he apparently does) that that can’t and won’t be the outcome? Why does he assume that once people know what people of another ‘faith’ believe, then they will necessarily be ‘comfortable’ with them? Has he never in his whole life met or heard of someone who believed loathsome sinister vindictive murderous things? We know that’s not true – we know he’s heard of lots of people who believed such things. We know he heard of some of them on the morning of July 7 2005, for just one example. So what does he mean? What is he thinking? Is he seriously thinking that if ‘people of faith’ just hash things out for long enough, in the end everyone will be ‘comfortable’ and we’ll all get along? He can’t be – he’s not stupid. But then what is he thinking?

We cannot afford religious illiteracy. No modern company would today be ignorant of race or gender issues. The same should be true of faith.

No it shouldn’t. This is the same pie-eyed thinking that tried to treat ‘religious hatred’ as the same kind of thing as racism and sexism, but it’s not the same, it’s different, because religion is propositional while race and sex are not. Race and sex are genetic and physical while religions are sets of ideas.

We have agreed to partner the proposal initiated by the Co-Exist Foundation to establish Abraham House in London. Though expressly about the Abrahamic faiths, it will be open to those from the wider faith community. It will be a standing exhibition, library and convention centre for the inter-faith world.

Ecch. That’s as substantive as he gets in the whole speech. You keep looking for something specific about what he is actually going to teach at Yale, about what ‘faith’ is actually supposed to have to do with globalization, but all in vain. It’s a big blob of warm fuzzy well-meaning wool. Maybe his friendship with Bush isn’t so surprising after all.

21 Responses to “The inter-faith world”

I never found Blair’s friendship with Bush surprising. Does no one remember his speeches at the time of the beginning of the Iraq war? All full of quiet, firm assurance and reason (based, as we soon found out, on lies), but so elegant; one felt it just had to mean something and be really serious. Right? Bush never measured up to the elegance and appearance of reason. That’s too much to expect. But did anyone hear either of them say anything really intelligent?

Blair, quite frankly, makes me sick. It’s one thing to be brought up catholic, but actually to sign on to the whole shebang this late in life, and say that you believe it! But then, on top of that, to set up ‘Abraham House’! Give me strength. Who is he trying to fool? Is Christianity and Abrahamic religion? No, it is not. Is Islam an Abrahamic religion? No, it is not. Just because Christianity and Islam claim some sort of descent from the biblical Abraham, and mesh their stories with the stories of the Jews, while excluding the Jews themselves, doesn’t make them Abrahamic. Sorry, Tony, here’s your first assignment. What does ‘Abrahamic’ mean? See if you can answer it without starting a fight!

Just imagine (that sounds appropriately John Lennonish) if 70 years ago there had been a Politics Foundation with Stalin, Hitler, Tojo, Roosevelt, Chamberlain et al as members, and inspirational Tony Blair as its inspirational cheer leader saying “We want people of one political creed to be comfortable with those of another because they know what they truly believe, not what they thought they might believe.”

DFG, you irk me as well sometimes but did I ever bother to mention that? If you want to moderate your own board – why not make it & go moderate it? Not like OB does not take care things are well on her board – at least I do not remember hearing her ask for help.

“And it tends to take the form of a rather childish and lazy rhetorical (I am being charitable here, unless Eric explains otherwise) device.”

‘It tends to’, DFG, you were merely a charitable fellow but ‘it’ wasn’t, so if you unload ad hominem be a sport & don’t let ‘it’ do all the work ;-)

I also don’t care whether you care or not whether you irk me or not – which is why, yes, agree or disagree but do not pull the woolly card in an attempt to disguise your ad hominem under the topic of the thread.

Or did you always want to become a cop but never quite made the physical test ;-)

As for woolly ‘memes’: I agree 100%! I do however think that memes can play a role in a good argument if you care to identify them.

Well to some extent I think people do think that way about the Catholic leadership – if only because of birth control. It’s so well known that most Catholics now simply ignore the Vatican bullshit on the subject, that the notion of a split between the top and the rank-and-file is quite familiar.

But that’s less true of other religions, including Islam of course.

Yeah – again, I’m well aware that no candidates in the US dared to say religion is off the table!

Historically, socially or politically relevant to whom? And how does knowing all this variegated detail make one educated? Moreover, how does this rather amorphous literacy impinge on company policy in the way that gender or racial issues might? Seems to me that Blair is doing his usual thing: speaking in nice rounded sentences which, when you take them apart, mean prcisely nothing. He’s just being ‘theological’; he’s been doing this for some time, even though he says that he didn’t ‘do God’ at 10 Downing St.

Educated? Well, I dunno, but I always thought knowing stuff was better than not knowing stuff, even if the stuff’s not very empirically reliable as a cosmological explanation. I mean, it’s better to know who Osiris was than NOT to know, since it might at some point be useful [in a pub quiz, for example, or helping with your kid’s homework…] OTOH, undoubtedly some things are more USEFUL to know than others, but OTOOH [the gripping hand!], it can be really quite useful to know stuff about religion if the world is run, as it appears to be, by nutters who actually believe this stuff…

You’re right Dave. It’s almost always better to know. There is a slight problem. If the world is run by nutters who believe this stuff — the question is always, which stuff? In other words, it’s never a matter of knowledge or literacy, when it comes to religion. It’s a bit more like a multiple choice question. I suppose it’s helpful to know which range the multiples might lie in.

Well but what Blair said doesn’t actually seem to be about religious knowledge. “No modern company would today be ignorant of race or gender issues. The same should be true of faith.” That seems to me to be a stealth claim that 1) “faith” issues are comparable to race and gender issues and 2) they should be treated the same way.

2) can be understood narrowly or broadly, and the broad understanding results in the familiar guff about sensitivity and respect in other words shut up about religion.

The Roman Catholic Church (in the past) told us all that we should never dare to enter churches of other denominations. To do so would have been sacrilegious. In addition, worthy of us having thereafter to visit the (nearest) confessional box. (As was applicable in my case in Northern Ireland).

In 1998 President of Ireland, Mary McAleese received communion in a protestant church. In the aftermath, there was terrible friction within the church. Some, from the higher echelons of the hierarchy were for and against her action. Nevertheless, it really did not matter one iota what the “yes/no camps thought – as the law on this deed is firmly laid down by Rome. It states, “Catholics are explicitly forbidden by Canon Law from taking Communion in this way.” One Irish prominent priest at the time of the debacle said, “no Catholic had the right to take Communion in a Protestant church and this applied to the Pope in Rome and Mary McAleese as much as it does to Paddy and Biddy Murphy.’ He said there was a fundamental difference between Protestant and Catholic churches on the question of transubstantiation whether the bread and wine literally changes to the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist.

Tony Blair says, “We cannot afford religious illiteracy. No modern company would today be ignorant of race or gender issues. The same should be true of faith”. If Eucharistic intercommunion with Protestant churches to this day is not possible – does Tony Blair propose to inform those of other Abrahamic faiths all about transubstantiation kit? The new Catholic catechism and the directory on ecumenism say: “It is not permissible for a Roman Catholic to receive Communion in churches of the Protestant tradition.”

Tony Blair went to visit the pope – it begs the question here as to how a recent convert to Catholicism such as he can have so much influence within the church. His thinking and language alone are so alien to RC minds.

It has always suited the RC Church to keep its flock in ignorance. As in keeping it that way, it continued to maintain power.

RC’s were never/are ever at any stage in their lives encouraged to read/own bibles. Each Sunday parts of the bible (from an RC ‘selective’ standpoint) are incorporated into the mass – with appropriate particles from said bibles being read by priests from the pulpits.

That is one of the main reasons as to why it does not understand all this “Faith” and “bind us together” baloney lingo.

For centuries RC flock have by Rome been kept in ignorance of other religions.

Hell, fire, and damnation has awaited those who dared to step out of line.